Thus the Mayne glideth
    Where my Love abideth. 
    Sleep’s no softer; it proceeds
    On through lawns, on through meads,
    On and on, whate’er befall,
    Meandering and musical,
    Though the niggard pasturage
    Bears not on its shaven ledge
    Aught but weeds and waving grasses
    To view the river as it passes,
    Save here and there a scanty patch
    Of primroses too faint to catch
    A weary bee. 
                And scarce it pushes
    Its gentle way through strangling rushes
    Where the glossy kingfisher
    Flutters when noon-heats are near,
    Glad the shelving banks to shun
    Red and steaming in the sun,
    Where the shrew-mouse with pale throat
    Burrows, and the speckled stoat;
    Where the quick sandpipers flit
    In and out the marl and grit
    That seems to breed them, brown as they: 
    Naught disturbs its quiet way,
    Save some lazy stork that springs,
    Trailing it with legs and wings,
    Whom the shy fox from the hill
    Rouses, creep he ne’er so still.

“My heart, they loose my heart, those simple words,” cries Paracelsus, and he was right.  They tell of that which to see and love is better, wiser, than to probe and know all the problems of knowledge.  But that is a truth not understood, not believed.  And few there be who find it.  And if Browning had found the secret of how to live more outside of his understanding than he did, or having found it, had not forgotten it, he would not perhaps have spoken more wisely for the good of man, but he would have more continuously written better poetry.

The next poem in which he may be said to touch Nature is Sordello. Strafford does not count, save for the charming song of the boat in music and moonlight, which the children sing.  In Sordello, the problem of life, as in Paracelsus, is still the chief matter, but outward life, as not in Paracelsus, takes an equal place with inward life.  And naturally, Nature, its changes and beauty, being outward, are more fully treated than in Paracelsus.  But it is never treated for itself alone.  It is made to image or reflect the sentiment of the man who sees it, or to illustrate a phase of his passion or his thought.  But there is a closer grip upon it than before, a clearer definition, a greater power of concentrated expression of it, and especially, a fuller use of colour.  Browning paints Nature now like a Venetian; the very shadows of objects are in colour.  This new power was a kind of revelation to him, and he frequently uses it with a personal joy in its exercise.  Things in Nature blaze in his poetry now and afterwards in gold, purple, the crimson of blood, in sunlit green and topaz, in radiant blue, in dyes of earthquake and eclipse.  Then, when he has done his landscape thus in colour, he adds more; he places in its foreground one drop, one eye of still more flaming colour, to vivify and inflame the whole.